14 January 1998: Eroding Paralysis

Wednesday, 14 January 1998:

Eroding Paralysis

It's snowing again today; we're expected to get two-to-four inches. I'm rather glad winter has finally shown up. It was kind of weird and strangely depressing for it to be in the 40s in December. Bright white skies and flurrying snow is how January is supposed to be.

I'm one of those people who sometimes gets overwhelmed when there's too much to do, especially too many things breaking and/or needing urgent attention. So I've been somewhat paralyzed the last couple of weeks by stuff I need to do. I've finally started coming out of that this week.

In particular, I've been doing the research and some legwork to get my computer fixed. It turns out that Power Computing has turned over their hardware support to an outfit called Decision One. A Web site called PowerWatch has a page on D1's tech support, which seems to give mixed service. The trends reported on the page suggest:

I'll spend a lot of time on hold trying to reach Decision One;
Power Computing hard drives are not very reliable in the first place, but
D1 has been pretty accommodating in shipping replacements to people who ask for them, rather than requiring what the whole machine be shipped into their repair facility.

So I'm optimistic that eventually I can get a replacement drive. However, I think I'm going to buy myself an additional drive regardless, to get my system up faster and have a more reliable piece of hardware. A friend of mine recommended APS Technologies as a good hard drive vendor.

Whew!

Other things I've been getting done:

I've read through the last three months' worth of The New Yorker magazine. They had a particularly entertaining almost-all-cartoons issue last month. They've also had some interesting articles on Microsoft, which are encouraging in their suggestion that the government is starting to realize that Microsoft really is a monopoly and needs to be controlled.

I've been watching the first season Babylon 5 episodes, and have caught up as far as editing out the commercials from my tapes go. I was a little irked that TNT screwed up broadcasting part of "Born To The Purple", though. Watching these episodes again, despite some of the wooden acting I think I'm with Ceej in preferring Commander Sinclair over Captain Sheridan. I don't dislike Sheridan as much as she does, but I think Sinclair was a deeper, more compelling character who would have fit better into the series as a whole.

Oh, yeah, and I found a spot to stick a half-height bookcase (on top of the plastic cubes that hold my gaming stuff) and opened up some extra space for my comics thereby. Good thing, too; I was nearly out of space - AGAIN!

Finally, my birthday is on Friday. I'll be 29. Not much preparation required for that, though I may bake baklava tonight. (Mmmmm. Butter-laden pastry.)

Michael Rawdon (Contact)